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2012/07/06

"They refuse to help us under the pretext that we have some documentation about certain controversial subjects like pornography, BDSM or prostitution."

Phan Bigotte and Thomas Leduc the president and vice-president of the Académie Gay et Lesbienne in Paris, one of the largest LGBTI archives in France. In this paper, Phan Bigotte and Thomas Leduc tell the story of their archive, the fight against AIDS and the difficulties and discrimination they encountered in creating their library. What do you think about the questions Thomas Leduc and Phan Bigotte pose in their essay: Should "LGBT archives be managed exclusively by salaried professionals, and directed by scientists or celebrities?" And should archives also include materials such as pornography or homophobe pamphlets or "should LGBTI archives only serve to tell a beautiful legend?To read the full paper, click "read more". Comment, share, discuss and enjoy.

LGBT archives in France

1 - Contrary
to the fact that some claim, there are initiatives in LGBT archives in France. Their
story is underestimated, even not visible.

2 - Our self-financed
association is active for more than eleven years. We have collected tens of thousands
documents (among which of the historic archives fonds). But we have never
managed to obtain neither place to warehouse, nor public subvention under
diverse pretexts.

3 - We were
slowed down by preconceived ideas and prejudices which continue in France. Finally
what is the model of archives which public authorities wish to promote?1) LGBT resources in France

From the beginnings
of our association, we examined the history of the existing and past
initiatives. These informations helped us a lot in the management of our own
archives but also for the visibility and the public awareness on this subject.
We also established a specific documentation on LGBT archives, libraries,
documentation centers and museums in France and in the world (see our catalog for example).

In France,
the initiatives are very rarely evoked, even less named. They are even glossed
over by certain persons to be able to justify their project or emphasize their
work.

Some of
disappeared associations, today forgotten, led nevertheless bravely diverse
actions in a difficult context: collection and put at the disposal of
documents, creation of documentary products (bibliographies and catalogs),
organization of events (colloquium, exhibition, festival), interventions with
media and with public institutions …

That is why
we think useful to be able to make known and recognize the work pioneer of
those who preceded us and which "made the contribution". You will
find in annexea historic panorama of LGBT archives, libraries
and documentation centers in France (see also our website a version with more details).2) Académie Gay et Lesbienne
[Gay and Lesbian Academy]

At the beginning, a personal
collection

In 1975,
Phan Bigotte, a young political refugee of twenty years, discovered upon his
arrival in France a new much more meaning, homosexual universe in all his
variety, very different of its youth in the South Viêt Nam. He began to collect
all the documents which he found on the homosexuality.

In 1989, after
having discovered his HIV-positivity, he sold his bookshop. The money of the
sale allowed him to buy by auction of the French State a big house for a better
storage of it more and more voluminous collection. He got back all the books of
his former gay shelf to complete his personal library.

Then he was
simultaneously an activist in two big associations of fight against AIDS, Act
Up-Paris and AIDeS. He preserved numerous documents of these associations (in
particular internal documents).

During the
years of discouraged fight against this mortal pandemic, the prevention and the
treatments were focused on the survival. He attended powerless in the premature
disappearance, with all hands, of numerous homosexuals. Indeed, often families
threw away everything, trying to clear out any trace of the homosexuality of
their parent died from the AIDS. What motivated him to plead for the necessity
of the conservation of their archives: for their memories which are also ours.

After the
success of the multitherapies with protease inhibitors, numerous historic
homosexual activists left organizations of fight against AIDS which had
professionalized. The tiredness, the bitterness or the choice to reorganize their
life on the other concerns had caused these departures. Then, many documents
were taken and/or thrown away causing the loss of an important part of the
history of the fight against AIDS in France.

In 2000, after
having waited in vain for supports, he decides to create with friends
collectors an organization with their own money and funds.

On March
1st, 2001, the Académie Gay & Lesbienne is officially registered in the
Prefecture in the form of non-profit organization.Today, one of the most
important LGBT fund in France

The name
given to our fund is Conservatoire des Archives et des Mémoires LGBT [Conservatory
of LGBT Archives and Memories]. It’s today doubtless the biggest gathering of
documents on the LGBT in France by its volume and its diversity.

Indeed, we collect any document concerning the
LGBT: of any format and on any medium :
including the short-lived (free intended to be thrown away); in all their variety: including on
the prostitution, the BDSM, the pornography (excluding pedophile kind); fromany countries; of any opinion: including documents
anti-LGBT (homophobic pamphlets, caricatural articles).We are also
interested in the related themes of the AIDS, the sexuality, the sex and the gender.

oof
special events documents(shows, festivals, parties) including flyers
(26 years of collection among which 11 years of systematic weekly collection)

In when an adapted warehouse
for archives?

The Académie
Gay et Lesbienne is a small association of less than about ten persons, certain
more active than the others according to their availability.It is
self-financed because it doesn’t still perceive a subsidy. We develop the
Conservatoire des Archives et des Mémoires LGBT, from day to day, thanks to the
work of the volunteers, their collections, their purchases, the donations (of
persons and organizations) and the exchanges with the other LGBT resources centers
in France and abroad.

Archives
are at present accommodated in the house of the president of the association,
whom they occupy in more than half. This building allowed a long-lasting
preservation of more and more voluminous documents. Regrettably we can’t
receive the public, for lack of real premises in the standards of security.

That is the
reason why we insure, as far as our means, a remote service : supply of
information, copies and digitalizations of documents; rerouting towards persons
and resources places.

Our procedures
to make accommodate archives, obtain a warehouse or a public subsidy failed
under diverse pretexts.

3) Difficulties: brakes
and prejudices

Homonormativity and « dirty
» archives

They criticized
us about the kind, the subjects and the origin of the documents which we keep.
Some politics use this criticism emanating from some gay personalities to
refuse to help us.

They think
ridiculous and not at all scientist that we keep flyers for example. They
consider that it’s only vulgar commercial advertisements without interest,
unworthy of "noble" archives.

As our
archives also cover the AIDS, they blamed us for contributing to the mixture
between AIDS and homosexuality and for encroaching on the domain of the
organizations of fight against AIDS. They refuse to help us under pretext that
we have some documentation about certain controversial subjects like pornography, BDSM or prostitution. They consider useless, even
counterproductive, to keep traces of the intracommunity conflicts.

They disapprove
that we agreed to preserve archives of controversial or politically incorrect
persons.

Should LGBT
archives only serve to tell a beautiful legend: pink (a community still united
and exemplary) and black (still victim of persecutions and discriminations)?

Reserved domain

In France, some support that archives should be conducted only by
scientists and "celebrities", and not by simple collectors like us. Some have even deeply recommended
to the president of our association (French with Vietnamese origin) to militate
in an association of Asian user-friendliness rather than to take care of LGBT
archives.

Furthermore
these people insinuate that the work of volunteers qualified as amateurs would
put in danger the safety of the collected funds: it would be better to use only
salaried professionals.

Who
exploits this argument? Persons who have no professional skills on archives,
nor no experiences as volunteers! What is their goal? Compromise any voluntary
work, of which ours, to be able to ask for a budget important to fund their own
project.

In France, the work of the volunteers allowed the rescue and the valuation
of many archives. These amateurs become more and more experimented, due to working
day after day. Some have very useful skills in the other domains (for example
in computing). There are also professionals (librarian or information officer)
who make some voluntary work.

Should LGBT archives be managed exclusively by salaried professionals, and directed
by scientists or celebrities?

Strategy

Our organization is independent and apolitical. But then, in France,
political relays are often necessary to obtain public aids to LGBT
associations. We created our association and collected archives without any
outside help. Others choose to wait for the election of new gay-friendly
leaders to start their project thanks to subsidies.

To our demands of help and premises, they answer us to give our archives to
a controversial project of big LGBT center of archives (see annexe). This one is always unfinished and failed ten
years after the launch and 100 000 euros of public subsidy from the City of
Paris. Its hegemonic positioning and its setbacks blocked the financing of quite
other initiative.

We think that the monopoly harms the pluralism. It’s necessary to be able
to have different structures of archives which have different policies of
acquisition, selection, management and valuation. Furthermore this diversity
offer the choice to the donors to entrust their archives according to their
affinities and their convictions.

Conclusion

Despite
these difficulties, we pursue our work of enrichment and development of our
fund. Our ambition still remains to open our archives to the public: for it, we
especially need a big warehouse.

We have
tried to explain to you the problems with which we are confronted. Don’t
hesitate to give us your advice and tell us about your experiment which can
help us.

Translation by Olivier P.

ANNEXE

1 - Non-profit
organizations

1975 : Association Laïque pour l’Étude du
Problème de l’Homosexualité (ALEPH) [Laic Association for the Study of the Problem
of the Homosexuality], created in Paris, in particular by Claude Courouve. It
became in 1977 the Centre d’Information
et de Documentation de l’Homosexualité (CIDH) [Information and Documentation
Center of the Homosexuality]. It collected a historic documentation, put question
to the politics and published in the press various documents on the legal
situation of the homosexuals. Stop of the activities in 1981.

1984 :Archives
Recherches Cultures Lesbiennes (ARCL)[Archives Research Lesbian
Cultures], created in Paris, in particular by Claudie Lesselier. Initially in an
apartment, they are accommodated since 1994 in a premises at the Maison des
Femmes de Paris [House of the Women of Paris] (single-sex place). They propose
a lending library, a media library and archives of the feminist and lesbian
movements. They managed to obtain subsidies of the City of Paris since 2004.

1984 :Association
Mémoire des Homosexualités [Memory of the Homosexualities], created in
Paris. It became in 1987 Association
Mémoire des Sexualités [Memory of the Sexualities]. His goal was the
creation of a foundation. It collected documents (in particular Daniel Guérin's
archives) and organized several public debates.

Since 1989,
his subsidiary the association of management Mémoire des Sexualités–
Marseille [Memory of the Sexualities – Marseille] took over, pursuing the
collection and the debates. The initial fund results from archives of Christian
de Leusse, President and founder of the association. Archives are accommodated
in his apartment in Marseille.

1994 :Résister-Vivre la Mémoire (RVLM)[Resist-Live
the Memory], created in Paris. In June and December, 1994, it organized
exhibitions, movies festivals, debate and published a miscellany about
homosexuality and AIDS.

1996 :Janet
& Co, created in Paris, has for objective to protect, to preserve, to
buy the written or iconic documents and the objects having belonged to
lesbians.

2001 (december) :Association de Préfiguration du Centre d’Archives et de Documentation
Homosexuelles de Paris (AP CADHP) [Association of Prefiguration of the
Center of Homosexual Archives and Documentation of Paris]created in particular by Jean Le Bitoux, following the election of
the new Mayor of Paris, the socialist Bertrand Delanoë. The City of Paris
attributed him in 2002 one hundred thousand euros subsidy "to make a
feasibility study" of the project of center.

Personalities,
associations (ours in particular) and collectives (of whom Archilesb! et VigiTrans) protested against: the
sub-representation of the lesbians and the trans, the lack of transparency and
communication, the absence of dialogue, the hiding of the existing initiatives,
the eclipse of archives on the AIDS and the prostitution, an conception of the
archive elitist and anti-militant…

The project
sank and the AP CADHP closed its Website in 2004, dismissed his promoter
(Jean Le Bitoux) and gave back its premises (obtained from the City of Paris).
The only concrete result of 100 000 euros of subsidy is a report of
prefiguration (which is not a feasibility study) returned to the City of Paris
in 2005: 80 pages of generalities for a renamed project Centre des Mémoires LGBTParis Île-de-France [Center of the
LGBT Memories Paris Ile-de-France]. To be able to request new subsidies, the
association organized meetings to establish a new scientific council. The
invited personalities (of whom we were a member) finally decided to interrupt
their works in front of the refusal of the association to allow to subscribe
and to communicate its accounts.

In 2007,
the project is taken back by Louis-Georges Tin. This one claims that the mayor
of Paris entrusted to him a mission concerning the LGBT memory and that in
2009, the City of Paris requested him to manage the future center. He wrote a
report intended to complete the one of the AP CADHP, where the project is
renamed Institut Arc-en-Ciel [Rainbow
Institute]. This new report always claims an ambitious project, with in
particular 750 000 euros of annual overheads and maintenance charges and ten
employees. Louis-Georges Tin pays there tribute in the work of the former team
but declares to wish to restart "on new bases, to get over the various
controversies" by the creation of a new association. He so constituted a
team with persons not belonging to the AP CADHP. Since the end of 2011, he
organized meetings to prepare the creation of his new association which still
not exists officially.

2 - Archives and libraries
within LGBT organizations

Numerous
associations created within them a library (see below some significant
examples). Besides there are archives held by trading companies: so the
archives of the newspaper Gai Pied (1979-1992) were acquired by
Webscape, publishing company of portal Gayvox, which keeps them in a storage
warehouse.

1983 :Fédération
Nationale des Lieux Associatifs Gais (FLAG) [National Federation of the Gay
Associative Places]which gathered
gay places of associative type obtained from the Ministry of Culture a subsidy
which allowed to equip every place of a lending library, where more than 200
books were accessible to the members and the visitors of the association
organizer of the place. She published then the catalog.

1991 : Obtaining of a 50 000-franc subsidy of the
Ministry of Culture for the documentation department of the Maison des Homosexualités (de Paris) [House
of the Homosexualities of Paris].

1995 : Creation, within the Centre Gai et Lesbien de Paris [Gay and Lesbian Center of Paris] become
the Centre Lesbien, Gai, Bi et Trans de Paris et Île de France[Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Trans Center of
Paris and Ile de France], a library which is one of the most important
places-resources in France today, thanks to the work of the volunteers.

2000 : Opening in Lille by Patrick Cardon (Gay Kitsch Camp association) of the Centre Européen de Recherches, d’Études et
de Documentation sur les Homosexualités [the European Center of Researches,
Studies and Documentation on the Homosexualities]. Become the Centre Européen de Recherches, d’Études et
de Documentation sur les Sexualités Plurielles et les Interculturalités –
CEREDSPI [European Center of Researches, Studies and Documentation on the
Plural Sexualities and the Interculturalities]. The center was a room of archives and
consultation within the premises of the Gay Kitsch Camp association, which also
served as bookshop and as working room for the festival Question de Genre and
the Publishing Question de Genre / GayKitschCamp. Because of the decrease of
subsidies, the premise was closed in 2005. Patrick Cardon moved in Montpelier
in a social housing where he keeps archives by hoping for a help of public
authorities.

3 – Archives and
documentation within public institutions

2005 : The City of Lyon announced the opening of a Centre de ressources documentaires gays et
lesbiens [gay and lesbian documentary resources Center]inside the Municipal library of Lyon (BmL). This initiative is the
outcome of the work led by Michel Chomarat, project leader “Memory” in the City
of Lyon and organizer since 2002 of the Assises de la mémoire gay (become Assises
de la mémoire gay et lesbienne). The fund of the center consists of present
books in the various departments of the BmL and present documents within the
Archives fonds of the BmL (in particular the fonds Chomarat). At the end of
2006, becomes Centre de ressources sur le Genre :
identités, sexualités, mémoire gay et lesbienne [Center of resources on the Gender:
identities, sexualities, gay and lesbian memory].

2012 : The Association Les Amis de Masques et Persona [the Friends of Masques and
Persona] announced the deposit in June of the archives of the magazine Masques (1979-1986) and publishing Persona
to the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Bnf) [National Library of France].

4 – Internet

There
existed and are real centers of on-line resources, as these three sites
pioneers:

I'm curious who has criticized you for collecting flyers and documentation of conflicts and controversies within the LGBTI communities. I agree with you that those are vital kinds of historic resources. Is this not a common view among French archivists or among French LGBTI activists?

The work you are doing to identify important historic sources and provide them the first level of protection is really important.

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